GOVERNMENT
By Adam Powell
Correspondent
CHAPEL HILL–The Chapel Hill Town Council is preparing to dramatically alter its land use management ordinance (LUMO) later this year. Local leaders and town staff are looking closely at ways to construct additional housing for working families without significantly altering the look and feel of surrounding communities.
This approach, which has been referred to in some planning circles as “missing middle housing,” applies to numerous housing types with an eye toward interconnectivity.
“This is a topic I think we first brought to Council’s attention in the January work session around LUMO,” said Chapel Hill Principal Planner Tas Lagoo. “We talked about the interest in building on some of the momentum around missing middle housing that Council built up last year through the housing choices amendments.”
Based on the feedback received from the council in the January work session, along with additional discussions with staff and the community, Lagoo’s department is recommending that Chapel Hill meet its missing middle burden in the coming years by constructing multi-unit dwellings (such as triplexes and fourplexes) in parts of town where those zoning uses are not currently approved.
The idea is that adding multi-family units in traditionally single-family areas will add to Chapel Hill’s housing stock, while also providing residents access to commuting and leisure activities that don’t always involve the automobile.
“What we recommend with the new LUMO is to start to allow that next increment of missing middle housing—things like triplexes, fourplexes, and, in some cases, cottage courts. We should start to allow them not necessarily based on zoning district but instead on things like infrastructure—things that tie into our complete community vision of a walkable, bikeable town,” explained Lagoo.
Lagoo made several suggestions for Chapel Hill to achieve more local housing while improving interconnectivity. One suggestion was to allow missing middle housing zoning on higher-capacity roadways like arterial and collector streets and take advantage of the town’s ever-improving and growing network of greenways.
“What we know is: Chapel Hill is going to have an even better greenway network in the future,” said Lagoo as he recommended the town start to allow missing middle housing not just based on street types, but also based on proximity to greenways.
Lagoo suggests that allowing missing middle housing in areas with adequate infrastructure is directly tied to and supports a complete community framework: “access to greenways and multimodal transportation opportunities; proximity to downtown and other mixed-use and commercial facilities (the interests we have baked into various elements of our comprehensive plan). And we know that we can achieve those by looking at our transportation network and citing missing middle housing accordingly,” explained the town’s lead planner.
Lagoo added that Chapel Hill’s current housing density along greenways and major thoroughfares is appropriate for significant additional growth, noting that members of his staff had considered several scenarios as it strategized on the best way to approach improving Chapel Hill’s housing stock without dramatically altering the town’s current look and feel.
“There are currently low-density residential districts along major thoroughfares in town along our major arterial [roads], along our collector roads, which can kind of span the gamut [of potential future growth],” he explained. “From roads that are clear thoroughfares to move people from point A to point B, but then also [roads that] start to get a little bit further into neighborhoods, but stopping short of kind of the capillaries of our street network (the quiet roads).”
Lagoo provided a graphic to town leaders showing various designs of potential missing middle housing that could be constructed in the future throughout Chapel Hill. The types of housing choices range from courtyard apartment-style homes to bungalow courts, townhomes, live-work complexes, and traditional multi-unit developments such as duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes.
These types of housing options are sorely needed in Chapel Hill, a town with a primary current housing stock of traditional single-family homes and mid-rise apartment complexes that largely house students and accompanying university staff.
“Types of housing fall between low-density single-family residential on the one end of the spectrum, and high-density multifamily development on the other,” explained Lagoo, regarding the current disparities in housing in town. “Missing middle [housing] is everything in between.”
Lagoo detailed a scenario for the council as to what it looks like to build out a residential neighborhood in Chapel Hill where town planners would implement slightly higher-density housing types on higher-capacity roads, and then allow that density to filter down approaching quieter neighborhoods with features such as cul-de-sacs.
“That’s where you start to preserve areas for single-family density only,” explained Lagoo, showing how new housing could be implemented without dramatically fazing or damaging the property values of nearby single-family homes. “It’s a really good way to start to retrofit suburbia: retrofit an entrenched development pattern.”
Lagoo added that the concept of incremental density on higher-capacity roads could feasibly get Chapel Hill headed in the direction of general suburban residential densities to support popular neighborhood amenities, including coffee shops and other consumer-friendly destinations.
“Your neighborhood stores,[for example:] you can start to move in that direction by retrofitting existing neighborhoods through this incremental approach,” explained Lagoo. “And so that’s our recommendation when it comes to missing middle housing: to move beyond just thinking about the town in terms of existing zoning districts, and really start to think about our assets in terms of our roads, our sidewalks, and our greenways. Start to cite missing middle housing based on those kinds of known and to-be-invested-in assets around town.”
Council member Adam Searing wondered who would ultimately make the decisions regarding which houses were appropriate in various parts of town if the previous zoning standards were no longer a primary consideration in the residential approval process.
“Say you have a lower-density lot and it’s zoned for a lower density zone,” inquired Searing. “Who makes the decision to allow that that lower density lot meets these criteria? How do we decide that it meets those criteria?”
Lagoo indicated that multiple departments currently in Chapel Hill (‘about five or six different uses,’ according to the lead planner) are already allowing various types of potential properties to meet the approval criteria based specifically on the street type on which they would front.
“Our public works department classifies every street in town based on three classifications : right, arterial collector, or local,” explained Lagoo. “Those classifications are based on specifically defined criteria regarding the role that the street plays in our overall transportation network.”
Lagoo said that the town’s research has found that street classification serves as a really good proxy for those specific criteria that are listed in the LUMO.
“If you hop around on Google Maps, there are exceedingly few properties that fall along an arterial or collector street that are more than, let’s say, a 15-minute bike ride from one of our major commercial centers, or more than a 15-minute bike ride from an already well-established bus route.”
“Obviously, things like transit services change over time. And so we don’t want to necessarily say well, if you’re close to this established bus route today, here’s what you can build on your property,” continued Lagoo. “Because we don’t want the more variable thing to lead the less variable thing. But street classifications… they don’t change much, if at all. And they serve as a good proxy for these other metrics that we’ve identified as really supporting missing middle housing.”
Council member Amy Ryan expressed concern about the possible impact of residential homes near local greenways, and the lack of access points to the various trails. She added that she’d prefer a residential zoning district only featuring quadplexes.
“I like your approach with the time, the density, the roads; I think that makes a lot of good sense,” said Ryan. “So I would be fine with doing that. The greenways are going to be a little bit more difficult, because sometimes the greenways are running in the back (kind of the backyards) of these neighborhoods. I think just figuring out the greenway piece, you’re going to have to maybe be a little bit more nuanced.”
Adam Powell is a reporter on local news and sports and an education communications professional. A 2001 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Powell has served as managing editor of multiple local publications, including the Mebane Enterprise, News of Orange County and TarHeelIllustrated.com. The public information officer for Rockingham County Schools in Eden, N.C., Powell is the author of four books and lives in Mebane with his wife and two children. This reporter can be reached at Info@TheLocal Reporter.press
Any Town Council member or mayor that is now or has been a lanlord or investor in apartnents or rental housing should recuse themselves from making decisions on this issue because of conflict of interests.